DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD 1st Edition

by Brendan Gregg (Author), Jim Mauro (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0132091510

ISBN-10: 0132091518

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The Oracle Solaris DTrace feature revolutionizes the way you debug operating systems and applications. Using DTrace, you can dynamically instrument software and quickly answer virtually any question about its behavior. Now, for the first time, there's a comprehensive, authoritative guide to making the most of DTrace in any supported UNIX environment--from Oracle Solaris to OpenSolaris, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD.

Written by key contributors to the DTrace community, DTrace teaches by example, presenting scores of commands and easy-to-adapt, downloadable D scripts. These concise examples generate answers to real and useful questions, and serve as a starting point for building more complex scripts. Using them, you can start making practical use of DTrace immediately, whether you're an administrator, developer, analyst, architect, or support professional.

The authors fully explain the goals, techniques, and output associated with each script or command. Drawing on their extensive experience, they provide strategy suggestions, checklists, and functional diagrams, as well as a chapter of advanced tips and tricks. You'll learn how to

Write effective scripts using DTrace's D language

Use DTrace to thoroughly understand system performance

Expose functional areas of the operating system, including I/O, filesystems, and protocols

Use DTrace in the application and database development process

Identify and fix security problems with DTrace

Analyze the operating system kernel

Integrate DTrace into source code

Extend DTrace with other tools

This book will help you make the most of DTrace to solve problems more quickly and efficiently, and build systems that work faster and more reliably.

DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD

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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The first guide to DTrace: the breakthrough debugging tool for Mac OS X, Unix, Solaris, and OpenSolaris operating systems and applications

Complete coverage: architecture, implementation, components, usage, and much more

Covers integrating DTrace into open source code, and integrating probes into application software

Includes full chapter of advanced tips and techniques

For users of DTrace on all platforms

Foreword by Bryan Cantril, creator of DTrace

DTrace represents a revolution in debugging. Using it, administrators, developers, and service personnel can dynamically instrument operating systems and applications to quickly ask and answer virtually any question about how their operating systems or user programs are behaving. Now available for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD, thousands of professionals are discovering DTrace - but, until now, there's been no comprehensive, authoritative guide to using it. This book fills that gap. Written by four key contributors to the DTrace community, it's the first single source reference to this powerful new technology. The authors cover everything technical professionals need to know to succeed with DTrace, regardless of the operating system or application they want to instrument. The book also includes a full chapter of advanced tips and techniques.

About the Author

Brendan Gregg is a performance specialist at Joyent and is known worldwide in the field of DTrace. Brendan created and developed the DTraceToolkit and is the coauthor of Solaris^TM Performance and Tools (Prentice Hall, 2006) as well as numerous articles about DTrace. Many of Brendan's DTrace scripts are shipped by default in Mac OS X.

Jim Mauro is a senior software engineer for Oracle Corporation, working in the Systems group with a primary focus on systems performance. Jim has 30 years of experience in the computer industry and coauthored Solaris^TM Performance and Tools and the first and second editions of Solaris^TM Internals (Sun Microsystems Press, 2000, and Prentice Hall, 2006).

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Product details

Series: Oracle Solaris
Paperback: 1152 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (April 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0132091518
ISBN-13: 978-0132091510
Product Dimensions: 7 x 1.6 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #369,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Solaris
- #4 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > BSD
- #93 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Macintosh

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Top Customer Reviews

Good Introduction, Content Out-of-Date

ByJeff Benshetleron January 14, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a good way to get started using DTrace on Solaris or FreeBSD. (I haven't tried the Linux version.) The book does a good job describing the overall structure of a DTrace script, including providers, probes, conditions, and actions. It also has a number of good examples, although perhaps 25% of the example no longer work because DTrace is evolving rapidly. That DTrace has rapidly evolved beyond what it was when this book was publish is the reason the book gets 4 stars instead of 5.

The book is well worth the purchase as a learning tool albeit less useful as a reference.

22 comments 6 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Everything you really need to know about DTrace in a ...

ByChristopher Copeon August 31, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Everything you really need to know about DTrace in a single book, yet with plenty of examples, source, and references to branch out from.

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Useful read

ByMark Almeidaon March 10, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A very useful book, another tool in the Solaris administrators toolbox.

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The must-read book for everyone who needs DTrace

ByDetlefDon October 28, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a must-read book if you plan to use DTrace for your needs. It not only explains the syntax and HowTo of Dtrace. It also shows many examples and - very useful - discusses the results and some background that makes it easier to understand the results of the scripts. That makes the book a real win - it's not just an explanation of Dtrace, but also a book to understand better the tools for systems monitoring and tracing. All this is clearly a result of the experience of the two expert authors Brendan and Jim.

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Essential Solaris Companion

ByB. Rockwoodon April 18, 2011

Format: Paperback

Its finally here, the great masterpiece. This books completes what "Solaris Performance & Tools" started. This new book focuses entirely on DTrace and is really several books rolled into one.

Part I gives you a complete DTrace Textbook. It breaks down the language and introduces you all the foundational concepts. It is brisk and every concept has an example making it extremely accessable.

Part II is the combination of several runbooks and a collection of cookbooks. For CPU, I/O, network, etc there is the same methodical systematic approach to exposing problems that we got in "Performance & Tools" but vastly expanded. After hitting all the fundamental resources it breaks down into various programming languages, databases, applications and daemons.

The true value of this book is here in Part II. You may know that you have a certain kind of problem, and you know that DTrace can probly find it for you, but you don't know where to start and in what order to proceed. If you do it on your own you may quickly find yourself overwhelmed and lost in the labyrinth that is the Solaris kernel. This is why the methodical approach Jim and Brendan take is so important, you really don't need to know anything more than you need to dig into some broad problem and the text leads you down the path of elimination and analysis step-by-step.

Part III hits tools, tips, and security. Learn how to spy on users, audit activity, use Apple Instruments or DTrace in NetBeans and lots more. Chapter 13 on tools is a great way to learn about all those tools out there that you may have heard of but aren't familiar with, or even introduce you to new toys you didn't know existed.

But thats not all... there are 7 Appendix, including a complete language reference, error message reference, and cheat sheet.

The important thing about this book is that it will actually help you solve real-world problems. A hardworking sysadmin doesn't have the time it takes to learn all the ins-and-outs of Solaris's kernel and learning all of DTrace's power can take years. The book is full of examples, I think have the page count has to be just code examples that you can actually use. This book is practical, accessible and will turn any Solaris administrator into an instant rock star.

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An Essential Book for Any Developer

ByDarrin Johnsonon June 20, 2011

Format: Paperback

In a nutshell, it is a very good book especially once you get beyond the narcissism embedded in the forward and introduction. From my perspective this book serves three valuable purposes - as a tutorial, as a reference, and a resource for cool tips, tricks and generally making an software engineer's life easier.

As a tutorial, this book provides one of the most cogent introductions to Dtrace I have seen including web content and prior books. The book, in a couple of chapters, provides a good overview of the purpose and architecture of Dtrace, the D language semantics to rudimentary examples including the canonical "Hello World". As a tutorial is great for both the neophyte and seasoned engineers. The rest of the book continues tutorial delving into key subsystems (e.g. CPU, Memory, IO, low-level networking, filesystems, etc.) to language to application use of Dtrace. Each section will provide a good introduction and numerous valuable examples to the engineer interested in each respective area.

Probably the weakest aspect of this book is as a pure reference book but I don't think that is its intent. The book includes several valuable appendices on Dtrace Tunable Variables, D Language Reference, Provider Arguments, etc. However it is likely that most engineers will tag key sections that are relevant to their particular interests/needs.

Also a book of cool tips and tricks, this books has a huge number examples, Tips and Tricks section, Tools, etc. with every engineer (system, middleware, end-user application development) benefiting from the specific examples and/or the ideas being conveyed. I would say that this is especially useful for even the engineers who may already be familiar with Dtrace but haven't leveraged it's capabilities to the fullest.

However on the downside this book doesn't provide a comprehensive to non-dtrace based observability nor does it cover the limitations (e.g. data flow through network stack) and consequences of using dtrace (e.g. probe effect, etc.) at least from my review of the content. However as a resource it is very useful to both new hires and seasoned engineers and
is a complementary to the slightly dated "Solaris(tm) Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris" book by Solaris(tm) by Richard McDougall, Jim Mauro and Brendan Gregg.

Overall a definite buy!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Great technology! Great book!

Even english is not my native language and I prefer to buy books in russian, this book is written in very good and easy to understand manner.Read more

Published on February 10, 2013 by lincz

dtrace must have

A must have for all solaris/macOS unix engineer. Compared to the manuals, the book is much more intuitive for any unix engineer to follow.

Published on November 27, 2011 by wicked-root

Excellent book about performance analysis in general and DTrace details

B Rockwood provides an excellent review of the book and there is not much to add beyond that. If you are interested in the state-of-the-art of system analysis / performance...Read more

Published on September 25, 2011 by Peter B. Galvin

The raw power of DTrace and the social grace of engineers, together at last.

The last book I tried to use while at my computer was the first edition of the O'Reilly behemoth UNIX Power Tools, a small phone book in both page count and page quality.Read more

Published on July 20, 2011 by Michael Ernest

Essential Addition to the Performance Bookshelf

Any jobbing performance analyst, system administrator or developer who wishes to move to the next level should get this book and write their name on it in thick marker - or else...Read more

Published on April 11, 2011 by MR DOMINIC A KAY

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